Saving lives, avoiding costs.

Quick Clicks:

From clinical improvement to financial gain

The cost efficiency model

NTX technology can make Rapid Response Teams more
effective and reduce costs.

Every hospital is in the business of saving lives. And avoiding costs is part of every business. Nihon Kohden America can help every hospital accomplish both. Our NTX technology can lead to faster interventions by Rapid Response Teams. And it is well documented that intervening sooner is better for improving both clinical and financial outcomes.

All of the improvements documented in the 100k Lives Campaign, now expanded to the 5 Million Lives Campaign, clearly illustrate that the Rapid Response Teams not only have contributed to saving over 122,000 lives but also demonstrated significant financial improvements. These incredible results were made possible in part by adhering to a set of protocols and manual observations of all in-patients that could potentially code during their stay. These protocols serve as a set of criteria, or triggers, to activate a Rapid Response Team when one or more occurs.

The triggers are as follows:


The 7 Rapid Response Team Triggers
1
Whenever any staff member (nurse, physical therapist, respiratory therapist, physician) is worried about the patient
2
Acute change in heart rate <40 or >130 bpm  
3

Acute change in systolic blood pressure <90 mmHg

  
4
Acute change in respiratory rate<8 or >28 per min  
5
Acute change in saturation <90 percent despite O2  
6
Acute change in conscious state  
7

Acute change in urinary output to<50 ml in 4 hours

  
Source: Criteria for Activating the Rapid Response Team, www.IHI.org

 
 

“According to studies cited in the IHI's Getting Started Kit: Rapid Response Teams How-to Guide, more than two-thirds of patients who suffer a cardiac arrest will exhibit signs of deterioration approximately six to eight hours before the arrest. The rapid response team is designed to intervene before the arrest, to assess and stabilize the condition, and if necessary, move the patient to the ICU where the chance of surviving arrest is greater.”

Source: RAPlD RESPONSE TEAMS—Ten Essentials Leaders Need to Know by Gretchen M. Dahlen, FACHE, and Betsy A. Benz

Two of the calls to action to initiate a Rapid Response Team alert depend on nurse assessment; the other five depend on manual collection of vital signs and fluid output.

The Rapid Response Teams have proven that reducing the time to intervene on a deteriorating patient condition leads to significant improvement in both clinical and financial outcomes. This has been demonstrated by 3,100 hospitals participating in the 100,000 Lives Campaign, of which 1,500 implemented Rapid Response Teams.

Until now, there has been no device available to automatically collect vital signs while providing freedom to ambulate that is also affordable and economically feasible to place on the vast majority of patients who today are typically not monitored. Hence the collection of the patient’s vital signs has been, for the most part, manually collected every four to eight hours.

The NTX changes this situation completely—it monitors the patient’s vital sign parameters continuously, efficiently and cost effectively.

Just imagine the improvements in quality and cost savings that could be achieved if the time to intervene can be further enhanced through the automatic collection of the patient’s vital signs. This is one of the primary applications for the NTX technology.

Using the NTX to avoid costs.

Clinical improvements lead to financial improvements, and the connection is easy to see, as illustrated here:

From clinical improvement to financial gain

The effectiveness of this approach has been demonstrated by 3,100 hospitals participating in the 100,000 Lives Campaign and 1,500 implemented Rapid Response Teams. And the data has been reported and presented by IHI articles appearing in Nursing Management as well as publications on the IHI website. The findings confirm two absolutes that cannot be ignored without compromising both business and clinical outcomes:

1.

Improving quality always reduces costs
2.

Reducing cost will never improve quality

It’s also easy to see how cost efficiency is achieved by increasing quality:


The cost efficiency model
 

Underlying assumption...

Improved quality yields:

Increased capacity

Increased cases
No change in total cost
 
Same cost  ÷  increased cases  =  reduced cost per case

Source: VHA

Think of the cost savings that could be realized through quicker assessments that may avoid costly ICU admissions and lead to reduced ALOS. This is one of the primary applications for the NTX technology.

How the NTX decreases time to intervention by Rapid
Response Teams:

  

One of the key principles of the 100,000 Lives Campaign is that “Soon is not a Time.” Time to intervene is critical in preventing in-hospital MI and death
The NTX automates the process of identifying changes to a patient’s vital signs and can notify the clinician when changes to the patient’s condition occurs
The result is quicker intervention, more lives saved, fewer costly ICU admissions and greater nurse productivity
4 of the 7 triggers to initiate a call to action are encapsulated around changes to the patient’s vital signs parameters
Typically these patients reside on Med.-Surg floors and are not routinely monitored
The NTX continually measures these parameters conveniently, economically and efficiently

The NTX—another first in innovation from Nihon Kohden America.

The NTX is the world’s first ergonomically designed telemetry transmitter that allows patients the freedom to ambulate while measuring 4 out of the 7 critical parameters that trigger a Rapid Response Team. The NTX is the most suitable device to monitor patients on general floors because it:

Does not require a monitor.

Does not require the patient to push an IV pole for a mounted monitor.
Maintains excellent battery life.
Requires very little nurse intervention and can be set to automatically initiate blood pressure readings at pre-set time intervals.
Is inexpensive.
Transmits alarms wirelessly to a central nurse station for evaluation, observation and notification to the RRT leaders.

Utilization of the NTX has these additional financial benefits:

The NTX is significantly less expensive than traditional bedside monitoring, thus deployment across a broad spectrum of patients is financially justified.

The NTX is both wireless and energy efficient, operating on three inexpensive AA batteries.
Data can be transmitted to a Nihon Kohden Central station for remote observation by trained monitoring technicians or telemetry nurses.
Vital signs results can be automatically transferred to the hospital’s clinical information systems through a Nihon Kohden HL7 interface.
Convenient readout continuously displays the HR, Sp02, NIBP and Respiration values, eliminating the need for the nurse or floor to manually collect this documentation.
The NTX is so reliable it is by backed by Nihon Kohden’s 5-year parts and labor warranty—allowing hospitals to control their operating costs after traditional 1-year warranty periods.


“Some is not a number. Soon is not a time.”

– Main premise of the 100,000 Lives Campaign, now expanded as the 5 Million Lives Campaign